#inequality

It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were swallowed up in her father's, and she was his to dispose of in marriage at will. Once she was married her property became absolutely that of her husband. What of those who did not marry? Common law met that problem blandly by not recognizing it. In the words of The Lawes Resolutions [the leading 17th century compendium on women's legal status]: 'All of them are understood either married or to be married.' In 1603 England, in short, still lived in a world governed by feudal law, where a wife passed from the guardianship of her father to her husband; her husband also stood in relation to her as a feudal lord. ↗

— Antonia Fraser

#common-law #empowerment #fathers #feminism #feudalism

Demonisation is the ideological backbone of an unequal society. ↗

— Owen Jones

#inequality #politics #ideology

Not all men (and especially the wisest) share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated. But it is very true that many foolish men have claimed this because it displeased them that women knew more than they did. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#education #empowerment #inequality #knowledge #men

Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart's content, can pontificate without taking into account the opposite point of view and keep the best arguments for themselves, for aggressors are always quick to attack those who have no means of defence. ↗

— Christine de Pizan

#deceit #defenselessness #double-standards #falsehood #hypocrisy

Inequality can have a bad downside, but equality, for its part, sure does get in the way of coordination. ↗

— Mary Douglas

#coordination #does #downside #equality #get

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order. ↗

— Friedrich August von Hayek

#determination #directed #each #economy #enforced

The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems. ↗

— Eric Alterman

#american #american politics #been #buy #economic

And it also became clear that these conditions of inequality and historical injustice have given rise to a feeling of hate in the world - a deeply felt hate that cannot easily be overcome with a few good words. ↗

— Ulrich Beck

#became #cannot #clear #conditions #deeply

It's much more acceptable for men to work and father kids. There's an inherent inequality, because we want to do it all, and I don't know how we can do this all. ↗

— Julia Louis-Dreyfus

#because #father #how #i #inequality

All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities. ↗

— James F. Cooper

#add #aid #aims #artificial #consequences